The present invention concerns an interface for transmit and receive mode access to the synchronous transmission medium of a distributed switching network.
The present invention applies, for example, to a multiservice distributed switching network adapted to switch traffic in synchronous circuit-switched mode and in synchronous or asynchronous packet-switched mode, the architecture of said network being based on a transmission medium time-shared between different stations, in which:
the transmission medium is synchronous and structured in repetitive frames in turn structured in time slots in turn structured in time cells, the latter being sized to contain a communication entity which can be either a circuit-switched cell or a segmented packet-switched cell,
an ideal time slot for access to the transmission medium in packet-switched mode is assigned to the respective stations communicating within the network by a centralized resource management system,
in each time cell and for all stations transmission medium access arbitration is applied to procure access to this medium, in decreasing priority order, to circuit-switched cells available at this time in any station, to synchronous segmented packet-switched cells available at this time in any station having an ideal access time slot anterior to the time slot containing the time cell in question, to synchronous segmented packet-switched cells available at this time in the station having as its ideal access time slot the time slot containing the time cell in question, to asynchronous segmented packet-switched cells available at this time in any station having for its ideal access time slot a time slot anterior to the time slot containing the time cell in question, and to asynchronous segmented packet-switched cells available at this time in the station having for its ideal access time slot the time slot containing the time cell in question.